2002
Elections in Kenya for president, 210 members of parliament and 2104 local
councilors at 18'366 polling stations around the country. There are 10.5
million registered voters. To succeed Daniel Arap Moi, the dictatorial then
merely authoritarian president since 1978, constitutionally barred from
remaining in office, 63% of the voters reject Uhuru Kenyatta, 41, son of
Kenya's first president, Jomo Kenyatta. Uhuru Kenyatta was selected by Moi
as the candidate of his ruling party KANU (Kenya African National Unity
Party). He is defeated by Mwai Kibaki, 71, candidate of the NARC (narcotics?
No: NAtional Rainbow Coalition) who has been a finance minister and then
Vice-President from 1978-1988 and became an opposition leader when multiparty
politics were reintroduced in 1991. The NARC wins 122 seats in parliament.
[< at the 30 Dec 2002 inauguration, Arap Moi at left, and Kibaki
at right]

2000 Leanne, 7, and her elderly
and sickly mother, Pat, 15, are kidnapped from the koala quarters of the
San Francisco Zoo. They are in danger of starving, because it is unlikely
that the kidnappers will be able to find the 1 kg of tender young eucalyptus
leaves that each koala requires daily. Fortunately, in the early hours of
the next day, the police receives an anonymous tip that enables them to
rescue the two koalas, unhurt, but ravenous.1996
FCC approves digital TV compromise
The US Federal Communications Commission approves an agreement setting standards
for advanced digital television on this day in 1996. The television and
computer industries had battled for nine years to agree on standards for
digital TV picture display. The final accord supported a standard that did
not specify the display format, but rather left it up to broadcasters to
choose from a variety of formats, including extremely high-definition pictures
or broadcasting several simultaneous shows in the old, lower-definition
mode. Broadcasters in the nation's ten largest markets officially began
broadcasting digital signals in November 1998. However, few people had yet
purchased a high-definition television set capable of receiving the digital
signal.
1995 El biólogo Antonio García-Bellido
de Diego , el filólogo Emilio Alarcos Llorach y el químico
Avelino Corma Canos son galardonados con los Premios Nacionales españoles
de Investigación en las categorías Científica, Humanística
y Técnica, respectivamente.
1990 Workplace video display regulation San Francisco becomes the first city
to adopt regulations regarding video display terminals in the workplace.
A new law required workers to perform fifteen minutes of alternate work
for every two hours spent at a video terminal. The measure was adopted in
response to the vision problems and repetitive motion injuries sustained
by thousands of workers in the 1980s. The measure gave companies with fifteen
or more employees two years to provide antiglare screens and ergonomically
correct furniture, or face a $500 per day fine.

1988 Bulgaria stops jamming Radio Free Europe after
more than 3 decades 1984 Four Polish officers are
tried for the murder of Father Jerzy Popieluszko.

^1983 US Steel Corporation shrinks
US Steel announced that it would slash
its steelmaking capacity by roughly 20 percent, as well as take a
whopping $1.2 billion pre-tax write-off for the year. The write-off
marked the biggest pre-tax charge in the steel industry, as US Steel
nudged past Bethlehem Steel, who, earlier that year, had taken a $930
million write-off. Along with this rather ignominious distinction,
US Steel's moves also brought a fresh round of lay-offs for 4,600
workers. All told, the plant closings and write-offs impacted 15,400
U.S Steel employees, as 10,800 workers who were previously laid-off
had now permanently lost their jobs.

^1979 Soviets take over in Afghanistan In an attempt to stabilize the
turbulent political situation in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union sends
75'000 troops to enforce the installation of Babrak Karmal as the
new leader of the nation. The new government and the imposing Soviet
presence, however, had little success in putting down antigovernment
rebels. Thus began nearly 10 years of an agonizing, destructive, and
ultimately fruitless Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan.
Ironically, Karmal overthrew
and murdered another Afghan communist, Hafizullah Amin, to take power.
Amin's government became unpopular and unstable after it attempted
to install a harsh communist regime, declared one-party rule and abolished
the Afghan constitution. Muslims in the nation rejected his rule and
formed a rebel force, the Mujahideen. When it became apparent that
Amin could not control the rebellion, Soviet troops intervened and
put a puppet ruler, Karmal, into power. For the Soviets, political
turbulence in this bordering nation, which was viewed by some officials
as a potentially useful ally pursuing its interests in the Middle
East, was unacceptable. The
Soviet intervention cost Russia dearly. The seemingly endless civil
war in Afghanistan resulted in thousands of Soviet dead and untold
monetary costs. It also brought an abrupt end to the era of détente
between the United States and the Soviet Union that began during the
Nixon years. In response to the Soviet intervention, President Jimmy
Carter withdrew the SALT II agreement from consideration by Congress.
The treaty, which had been signed in June 1979, was designed to establish
parity in nuclear delivery vehicles between the United States and
the Soviet Union. Carter also halted grain shipments to the Soviet
Union and ordered a US boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

^1978 Spanish King ratifies democratic Constitution Following its approval in a
national referendum, King Juan Carlos ratifies Spain's first democratic
constitution in nearly five decades. Juan Carlos was sworn in as the
first ruling monarch of Spain in more than forty years on November
22, 1975, two days after the death of General Francisco Franco, the
far-right dictator of Spain since 1936. Juan Carlos's grandfather
was Alfonso XIII, the last ruling monarch of Spain, who was forced
into exile after he refused to abdicate the throne after Spain was
declared a republic. Juan Carlos, born in Italy in 1938, returned
to Spain in 1955 under the invitation of Franco, and studied in Madrid
before earning several commissions in the Spanish armed forces. In
1969, Franco named him his successor. However, after assuming power,
King Juan Carlos I immediately begins dismantling Franco's system
of dictatorial government, and over the next decade presides over
a period of extensive democratization in Spain.

^1969 US and North Vietnamese battle near Loc Ninh In the fiercest battle in six
weeks, US and North Vietnamese forces clash near Loc Ninh, about 130
km north of Saigon. Elements of the 1st Infantry Division reported
killing 72 of 250 North Vietnamese soldiers in a daylong battle. Loc
Ninh, a village of fewer than 10'000, was located at the northern
limit of national Route 13, only a few kilometers from the Cambodian
border. It was the site of several major battles between US and Communist
forces. On 05 April 1972, as part of their Easter Offensive, North
Vietnamese forces overtook Loc Ninh during their attempt to capture
the An Loc provincial capital to the south.

^1968 First men to orbit the Moon return to Earth
Apollo 8, the first manned mission
to the moon, returns safely to earth after a historic six-day journey.
On December 21, Apollo 8 was launched by a three-stage Saturn 5 rocket
from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with astronauts Frank Borman, James
Lovell, Jr., and William Anders aboard. On Christmas Eve, the astronauts
entered into orbit around the moon, the first human spacecraft ever
to do so. During Apollo 8's ten lunar orbits, television images were
sent back to earth and spectacular photos were taken of the moon and
the earth from the spacecraft. The three astronauts were the first
human beings to observe a complete view of the earth's sphere and
also the first to see the dark side of the moon. On Christmas morning,
Apollo 8 left the moon's orbit and began the journey back to earth,
splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on December 27.

1968 The US agrees to sell F-4 Phantom jets to Israel.

^1966 US and South Vietnam attack Viet Cong stronghold A United States and South Vietnamese
joint-service operation takes place against one of the best-fortified
Viet Cong strongholds, located in the U Minh Forest in the Mekong
Delta, 200 km southwest of Saigon. US warplanes dropped bombs and
napalm on the forest in preparation for the assault. Then, 6000 South
Vietnamese troops attacked Viet Cong positions in the forest. The
US Navy also participated in the operation--on December 29, the US
destroyer Herbert J. Thomas shelled suspected Viet Cong positions
in the same area for seven hours. The operation ended on December
31, with 104 Viet Cong reported killed and 18 captured. The operation
was considered a success in weakening the communist strength in the
U Minh Forest.

1956 Segregation on buses in Tallahassee, Florida is outlawed.
1951 The US Postal Service in Cincinnati, Ohio,
puts into service a Crosley right-hand-drive car designed specifically for
mail delivery. The driver is on the mailbox-side of the car, 1950
The United States and Spain resume full diplomatic relations for the first
time since the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. 1949
Queen Juliana (Netherlands) grants sovereignty to United States of Indonesia.
 en el marco de una unión económica entre el archipiélago
y la antigua metrópoli.1947 The new Italian
constitution is promulgated.

^1945 Korea divided.
In the aftermath of World War II, foreign ministers from the former
Allied nations of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain
agree to divide Korea into two separate occupation zones and govern
the nation for five years. The country is split along the 38th parallel,
with Soviet forces occupying the northern zone, and Americans stationed
to the south. Korea's history dates back over four thousand years
and from the fourteenth century until its formal annexation by Japan
in 1910, the Yi dynasty ruled over the nation.
During World War II, the Allies promised independence to Korea, and
in 1948 self-rule was granted with the establishment of two separate
regimes in North and South Korea. On June 25, 1950, Democratic South
Korea was attacked by Communist North Korea. US and South Korean forces
fought a desperate resistance until a large US-led U.N. military force
was sent to Korea. Within two weeks, U.N. forces were in complete
control of South Korea, and on October 7 the US-led force crossed
the 38th parallel into the North, ignoring China's threat to enter
the war if the allied force failed to honor the 1945 division of Korea.
Over the next eight weeks, invading U.N. forces crush the North Korean
opposition as they push to the Yalu River and Manchurian border.
However, at the end of November, true
to their threat, several hundred thousand Chinese Communist troops
pour over the border into North Korea in an overwhelming show of force,
and U.N. troops begin a desperate retreat out of North Korea, at a
cost of nearly 100,000 Americans killed, wounded, or missing in action.
Chinese forces overrun South Korea, and by the beginning of 1951 have
captured Seoul, the capital of South Korea. US-led forces under General
Douglas MacArthur recapture Seoul by March, and by mid-1951 have pushed
as far north as the 38th parallel, reestablishing the 1945 division
of Korea that still exists today, despite the three bloody years of
the Korean War.

^1943 US rail strike averted by threat of government
take-over. The
threat of a paralyzing railroad strike loomed over the United States
during the 1943 holiday season. President Franklin Roosevelt stepped
in to serve as a negotiator, imploring the rail unions to give America
a "Christmas present" and settle the smoldering wage dispute. But,
as Christmas came and went, only two of the five railroad brotherhoods
agreed to let Roosevelt arbitrate the situation. So, on December 27,
just three days before the scheduled walk-out, the President shelved
his nice-guy rhetoric and seized the railroads. Lest the move look
too aggressive, Roosevelt assured that the railroads would only be
temporarily placed under the "supervision" of the War Department;
he also pledged that the situation would not alter daily rail operations.
The gambit worked, as officials for the recalcitrant brotherhoods
made an eleventh-hour decision to avert the strike.

^1942 Nazis form brigade of Soviet traitor POWs
The German military begins enlisting
Soviet POWs in the battle against Russia. General Andrei Vlasov, a
captured Soviet war hero turned anticommunist, was made commander
of the renegade Soviet troops.
Vlasov had been a military man since 1919, when, at age 19, he was
drafted into the new "Red" Army to fight in the Russian Civil War.
After joining the Communist Party in 1930, he became a Soviet military
adviser to China's Chiang Kai-shek. Returning to Russia in 1939, Vlasov
was given the 4th Armored Corps to command. He distinguished himself
in the defense of Kiev and Moscow against the German invaders, even
winning the Order of Lenin in 1941, and later the Order of the Red
Banner as commanding general of the 20th Army.
Then came the defense of Leningrad in 1942. The Germans were overwhelming
the Soviet forces at the front, and Stalin would not allow Vlasov
to retreat to a more favorable position. His army was battered, and
he was taken prisoner by the Germans along with many of his men. Back
in Germany, Vlasov became disgusted with Stalin and communist ideology,
which he had come to believe was a more sinister threat to the world
than Nazism. He began broadcasting anti-Soviet propaganda and formed--with
Nazi permission, of course--the Committee for the Liberation of the
Peoples of Russia. Its goal: to overthrow Joseph Stalin and defeat
communism. The German "Smolensk
Committee" began persuading more and more captured Russians, Ukrainians,
Cossacks, and other Soviet anti-Stalinists to join the German war
effort. These now-pro-German Soviets were finally formed into a 50'000-man
army, the Russian Liberation division, and fought toward the end of
the war, with Vlasov at their command. Tens of thousands ending up
turning back against the Germans, then finally surrendering to the
Americans--rather than the advancing Soviets--when the German cause
was lost. The Americans, under secret terms of the Yalta Agreement
signed in February, repatriated all captured Soviet soldiers--even
against their will. Vlasov was among those returned to Stalin. He
was hanged, along with his comrades in arms.

1915 In Ohio, iron and steel workers go on strike for an
eight-hour day and higher wages.

^1913 Leader of Calumet strike is shot in the back and
shipped off to Chicago.
On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, 1913, strikers and their families
began arriving at the Italian Hall, a two-storey brick building, just
over a block from Calumet's fire station. At one end of the building
a single set of double doors opened onto a straight flight of stairs
to the social rooms on the upper floor. By two o'clock, over 175 adults
and 500 children had crowded inside to seek relief from the stresses
of the five-month-old miners' strike against the owners of the Calumet
& Hecla (C & H) copper mine. They sang carols and the children queued
to see Santa Claus, who had modest gifts for each of them. When, around
half past four as the party began to disperse, there was a cry of
`Fire!' and the panic-striker families ran desperately for the stairs.
A few escaped, but once one
fell, a wall of human bodies dammed the staircase as the terrified
people continued to pour down the stairs. Those at the bottom died
first, crushed to death by the weight of their brothers, sisters,
friends and union comrades. When rescuers arrived, the corpses were
so tightly packed that they had to lift them like rubble from the
top. A temporary morgue was set up in the village hall and, having
been stripped for the coroner's examination, the seventy-four bodies,
sixty of them aged between two and sixteen, were laid out, as if sleeping.
By noon the next day, the shell-shocked
communities of the Keewenaw peninsula had raised $25'000 for the families,
with many opponents of the strike donating to the relief fund. But
there was anger as well as grief on the striking miners' side. The
president of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM), Charles Moyer,
declared that the union would bury its own dead and take no aid from
people who so recently had denounced the strikers as `undesirables'.
Fifty of the victims were Finns and the local socialist Finnish language
paper, Tyomies (`The Worker'), blamed the catastrophe on an unidentified
intruder from a company-sponsored vigilante group, the Citizen's Alliance,
who had played a cruel hoax but had got out before the crush began.
A few union members even suggested that other Alliance men had held
the doors, ensuring the lethal crush on the stairs. In the desperate
hours immediately after the tragedy, the awful accident was reinterpreted
as cold-blooded mass murder.
The reaction of the Citizens' Alliance was direct. An official delegation
of five men went to Moyer's hotel room in Hancock that same day. They
subsequently claimed that Moyer, with some reservations, agreed to
accept Alliance donations to the relief funds and to dampen down the
rumours surrounding the recent tragedy. Shortly thereafter, an `unofficial'
mob ran the union leader out of town. With a gunshot fleshwound in
his back, Moyer was bundled onto a Chicago-bound train and told firmly
that, if he set foot in the region again, he would be lynched. In
the short term, the mob's action proved a mistake since it drew national
attention to the dispute at a time when the Italian Hall disaster
evoked sympathy, for the strikers. Cinemas across America showed newsreel
footage of the children's mass funerals with captions spreading the
rumor that a man wearing a Citizens' Alliance button had triggered
the stampede.

^1899
Carry Nation attacks her first saloon. After
moving to Medicine Lodge, Kansas, Carry Amelia (Moore) Nation was
outraged that the Kansas "dry" laws were not being enforced.
For several years she was an outspoken camapaigner of the Women's
Christian Temperance Union, of which she and Mrs. Wesley Chain, wife
of the Baptist minister, organized a chapter in Medicine Lodge during
the 1890's. But she finally decided that words were not enough.
So, on this afternoon, after a day of
prayer, Carry
Nation, 53, and Mrs. Cain put on their best dresses and bonnets
and start out. Men, women and children promptly fall in behind the
crusaders to see what is going to happen, and when they reach Mort
Strong's saloon, they are surrounded by more than 200 persons. As
Carry starts to go inside, armed with no more than an umbrella, the
town constable steps up and says, "I wish I could take you off the
streets.   "Yes," she replied, "you want to take, me a
woman whose heart is breaking to see the ruin of these men, the desolate
homes and broken laws  and you, a constable, oath-bound to close
this man's unlawful business!"
Carry steps forward, pushes aside the swinging doors and strides into
the saloon. She has gone no farther than the front room when Strong
hurries from the bar, takes her by the shoulders, turns her around
and regardless of her shrieks, pushes her back into the street. With
tears streaming from her eyes, Carry Nation continues alternately
to sing and hurl curses at the saloon keeper, and Mrs. Cain and half
dozen other women joined in the song. Their shrill voices carry over
town, and soon the crowd about the saloon numbers some 500. Some encourage
her, while others shout defiance.
After several more unsuccessful attempts to enter the saloon, Mrs.
Nation starts off toward home, singing. Behind her come Mrs. Cain,
and an ever increasing stream of women. At Carry's home, throughout
the remainder of the afternoon, the excited women sing, pray and rejoice
over the downfall of the saloon, while a crowd hangs about outside
and called for more action.
That evening, there is great excitement throughout town and finally
the rumor is passed about that Strong has horse-whipped a woman. Finally,
about midnight, the mayor and several councilmen go in a body to Strong's
place and express surprise and indignation at finding beer and whisky
on the premises. They sternly tell Strong that he must leave town
at once or take the consequences. He leaves the next morning, and
Carry Nation rejoices that are were only six saloons remaining in
her town. Carry Nation would
go on to on similar rampages in Wichita and Topeka, and in other cities
in Iowa and Illinois as well. She would go armed with a bag of rocks
and, starting on 21 January 1901, with her trade-mark hatchet.
After her rather brief "hatchetation"
period, which brought her national notoriety, she continued to rail
against not only alcohol, but also fraternal orders, tobacco, foreign
foods, corsets, skirts of improper length, and mildly pornographic
art of the sort found in some barrooms of the time. She was also an
advocate of woman suffrage. Despite her campaign, the enactment in
1919 of national prohibition was largely the result of the efforts
of more conventional reformers, who had been reluctant to support
her. She died on 9 June 1911. NATION
ONLINE: her 1904 autobiography, The
Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation, The
Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation

^1864 Reb Army of Tennessee retreats, defeated.
General John Bell Hood's broken and
defeated Confederate Army of Tennessee finishes crossing the Tennessee
River, retreating into Mississippi. The last half of 1864 was a disaster
for the army. In May, Union General William T. Sherman began his drive
on Atlanta from Chattanooga, Tennessee. The Confederate army was commanded
then by Joseph Johnston, who responded to Sherman's flanking maneuvers
by retreating slightly each time. From May to July, Johnston slowly
backed into Atlanta, exchanging territory for time. When the troops
reached Atlanta, Confederate President Jefferson Davis replaced Johnston
with the offensive minded Hood.
Hood immediately attacked Sherman three times in late July, losing
each time. His offensive capabilities spent, Hood endured a monthlong
siege of Atlanta. In early September, Hood was finally forced to relinquish
the city to Sherman. Hood hung around to try cutting into Sherman's
supply lines but then retreated into Alabama. In November, Hood tried
to draw Sherman from the deep South by moving towards Nashville, Tennessee.
In response, Sherman dispatched part of his army back to Tennessee
while taking the rest on his devastating march across Georgia, during
which the Yankees destroyed nearly everything in their path.
Hood moved north and fought two battles
that were disastrous for the Confederates. At Franklin on 30 November
1864, Confederate attacks on entrenched Union soldiers resulted in
ghastly Confederate casualties and the loss of six of the army's finest
generals. On 15 and 16 December 1864, the Confederates were crushed
by the Yankees in front of Nashville. The dwindling numbers of participating
soldiers tell the sad story of the Rebel army. In May, some 65'000
Confederates faced Sherman in northern Georgia. On 20 September, after
Atlanta fell, Hood's force numbered 40'403. After crossing the Tennessee
River, Hood reported 18'708 officers and enlisted men, a figure that
another Confederate general, Pierre Beauregard, thought was significantly
inflated. The Confederate Army of Tennessee was no longer a viable
fighting force.

^1846 Doniphan's Thousand take El Paso del Norte from
Mexicans. The
rag-tag army of volunteers known as Doniphan's Thousand, led by Colonel
Alexander W. Doniphan, wins a major victory in the war with Mexico
with the occupation of El Paso. Born in Kentucky in 1808, Doniphan
moved to Missouri in 1830 to practice law. But the tall redheaded
man was not satisfied with fighting only courtroom battles, and he
volunteered as a brigadier general in the Missouri militia.
When war between Mexico and the US
erupted in 1846, the men of the 1st Missouri Mounted Volunteers elected
Doniphan their colonel, and marched south to join General Stephen
Kearny's army in New Mexico. Since they were not professional military
men, Doniphan's troops cared little for the traditional spit-and-polish
of the regular troops, and reportedly looked more like tramps than
soldiers. Likewise, Doniphan was a casual officer who led more by
example than by strict discipline. Nonetheless, Doniphan's Thousand
proved to be a surprisingly effective force in the war with Mexico.
In December, Doniphan led 500
of his men and a large wagon train of supplies south to join General
John E. Wool in his planned invasion of the Mexican state of Chihuahua.
Before he had a chance to meet up with Wool's larger force near the
city of Chihuahua, Doniphan encountered an army of 1200 Mexican soldiers
about 50 km north of El Paso del Norte, the Mexican city now called
Ciudad Juares, on the south bank of the Rio Grande (El Paso, Texas,
on the northern bank, did not yet exist). Although his opponents had
twice the number of soldiers, Doniphan led his men to victory, and
with the path to El Paso now largely undefended was able to occupy
the city two days later. When
nearing the Mexican border, Doniphan learned that General Wool's forces
had broken off their invasion of Chihuahua because the army's wheeled
vehicles had proved unworkable in the desert landscape. But rather
than turn back, Doniphan reassembled his army to its full force of
about 1000 men and was allowed to proceed with the invasion unassisted.
Once again grossly outnumbered--the Mexican army was four times the
size of Doniphan's--the Missouri troops were still able to quickly
break through the defensive lines and occupy Chihuahua City.
By mid-summer 1847, Doniphan's victorious
army reached the Gulf Coast, where they were picked up by ships and
taken to New Orleans for discharge. By then, the focus of the battle
had shifted to General Winfield Scott's campaign to take Mexico City.
In September of that year, Scott's troops ended the war by successfully
occupying Mexico City, and for the first time in US history an American
flag flew over a foreign capital. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,
signed early in 1848, gave the US the vast western territory stretching
from Texas to the Pacific and north to Oregon

1845 Ether 1st used in childbirth in US, Jefferson
GA

^1831
Darwin sails off on 5-year exploration.
British naturalist Charles Darwin sets out from Plymouth, England,
aboard the HMS Beagle, on a five-year surveying expedition
of the southern Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Visiting such diverse
places as Brazil, the Galapagos Islands, and New Zealand, Darwin acquires
an intimate knowledge of the flora, fauna, wildlife, and geology of
many lands. This information proves invaluable in the development
of his theory of evolution, first put forth in his groundbreaking
scientific work of 1859, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection. Darwin's theory of natural selection argues that species
are the result of a gradual biological evolution of living organisms
in which nature encourages, through natural selection, those species
best suited to their environments to propagate future descendants.
The Origin of Species is the first significant work on the theory
of evolution, and is greeted with great interest in the scientific
world, although it is also violently attacked because it contradicts
the account of creation given in the Bible. Nevertheless, the work,
unquestionably one of the most important in the history of science,
eventually succeeds in gaining acceptance from almost all biologists.
The
Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation
of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life would be published
in England on 24 November 1859. Darwin's theory of natural selection
argues that species are the result of a gradual biological evolution
of living organisms in which nature encourages, through natural selection,
those species best suited to their environments to propagate future
descendants. The first printing
of 1250 copies sells out in a single day. By 1872, it would have run
through six editions, and become one of the most influential books
of modern times. Darwin, the privileged and well-connected son of
a successful English doctor, had been interested in botany and natural
sciences since his boyhood, despite the discouragement of his early
teachers. At Cambridge, he found professors and scientists with similar
interests and with their help began participating in scientific voyages.
He traveled around South America for five years as an unpaid botanist
on the HMS Beagle. By the time Darwin returned, he had developed an
outstanding reputation as a field researcher and scientific writer,
based on his many papers and letters dispatched from South America
and the Galapagos Islands, which were read at meetings of prominent
scientific societies in London. Darwin began publishing studies of
zoology and geology as soon as he returned from his voyage. Fearing
the fate of other scientists, like Copernicus and Galileo, who had
published radical scientific theories, Darwin held off publishing
his theory of natural selection for years. He secretly developed his
theory during two decades of surreptitious research following his
trip on the Beagle. Meanwhile, he married and had seven children.
He finally published Origin of Species after another scientist began
publishing papers with similar ideas. His book laid the groundwork
for modern botany, cellular biology, and genetics. He died in 1882.
Darwin, who was influenced by
the work of French naturalist Jean Baptiste de Lamarck, and later
by English scientist Alfred Russel Wallace, acquired most of the evidence
for his theory during a five-year surveying expedition aboard the
HMS Beagle during the 1830s. Visiting such diverse places
as Brazil, the Galapagos Islands, and New Zealand, Darwin acquired
an intimate knowledge of the flora, fauna, wildlife, and geology of
many lands. This information, along with his experiments with variation
and interbreeding after returning to England, proved invaluable in
the development of his theory of natural selection. His On
the Origin of Species is the first significant work on the
theory of evolution, and is greeted with great interest in the scientific
world, although it is also violently attacked because it contradicts
the account of creation given in the Bible. Nevertheless, the work,
unquestionably one of the most important in the history of science,
eventually succeeds in gaining acceptance from almost all biologists.
Darwin, the privileged and well-connected
son of a successful English doctor, had been interested in botany
and natural sciences since his boyhood, despite the discouragement
of his early teachers. At Cambridge, he found professors and scientists
with similar interests and with their help began participating in
scientific voyages, including the HMS Beagle's trip.
By the time Darwin returned, he had
developed an outstanding reputation as a field researcher and scientific
writer, based on his many papers and letters dispatched from South
America and the Galapagos Islands, which were read at meetings of
prominent scientific societies in London. Darwin began publishing
studies of zoology and geology as soon as he returned from his voyage,
while also secretly working on his radical theory of evolution.
Knowing that scientists who had published
radical theories before had been ostracized or worse, Darwin held
off on publishing his theory of natural selection for nearly two decades.
Meanwhile, he married and had seven children. He finally published
On
the Origin of Species after another scientist began publishing
papers with similar ideas. His book laid the groundwork for modern
botany, cellular biology, and genetics. He died in 1882.
DARWIN ONLINE:

2007
Benazir
Bhutto[21 Jun 1953–] [05 Oct 2006 photo >]
and 23 others including a suicide bomber, who first shot Bhutto,
in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Bhutto was a Pakistani woman, head of the center-left
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) affiliated to the Socialist International.
Bhutto was the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state, having been twice
elected Prime Minister of Pakistan. She was sworn in on 02 December 1988,
but was removed from office on 06 August on grounds of alleged corruption,
by order of then-president Ghulam
Ishaq Khan [20 Jan 1915 – 27 Oct 2006]. After being re-elected Bhutto
took offuce on 19 October 1993 but was again removed on similar charges,
on 05 November 1996, this time by President Farooq
Leghari [29 May 1940~]. Bhutto went into self-imposed exile in Dubai
in 1998, where she remained until she returned to Pakistan on 18 October
2007, after reaching an understanding with President Pervez
Musharraf [11 August 1943~] by which she was granted amnesty and all
corruption charges were withdrawn. She was the eldest child of former prime
minister Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto [05 Jan 1928 – 04 Apr 1979]. —(071227)
2005 Stuart Alexander, 44, in a maximum surveillance (non-stop
video, a guard every 15 minutes) hospital cell (bare of anything suitable
for suicide) at San Quentin State Prison. Alexander, mentally deranged,
was awaiting automatic appeal of his 15 February 2005 death sentence for
murdering, on 21 June 2000, in his Santos Linguisa sausage factory in San
Leandro, California. federal meat inspectors Thomas Quadros, 52, and Jean
Hillery, 56, and state inspector William Shaline, 57 (the was one more:
state inspector Earl Willis, who escaped). — (051228)
2004 Fourteen persons by a gas leak explosion at 17:00 (:00 UT)
which collapses a 4-story HLM building of ten 4-room apartments (built in
1964), rue de la Martre, in the Wagner neighborhood of Mulhouse (Haut-Rhin),
France. 15 persons are injured.2004 Grygoriy Kirpa,
suicide (or disguised murder?), Ukrainian transportation minister.2004
Sixteen persons including a suicide car bomber, in the Jadariyah
neigborhood of Baghdad, at the gate of the home and offices of Abdul Aziz
al-Hakim (who is unhurt), head of Iraq's biggest political party, the Supreme
Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), that had been started
by Shi'ite Muslims in exile in Iran to oppose Saddam Hussein. Some 50 persons
are injured. The elder brother of Abdul Aziz, ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim,
had been head of SCIRI, and was killed in August 2003 by a suicide bomber.
2003 Rachel Perry, 18, of bacterial meningitis, in Bennington NH.2003 Four Bulgarian soldiers, 2 Thai soldiers, 6 Iraqi policemen,
1 Iraqi woman, 4 suicide truck bombers , one of whom reaches the
building of the Bulgarians, while the other 3 are shot short of their intended
targets but still cause casualties, in coordinated attacks, which also use
mortars and machine guns, throughout Karbala, Iraq, where Filipinos, 422
Thais (mostly medics and engineers), 2400 Poles, and 485 Bulgarians form,
under the command of Polish Maj. Gen. Andrzej Tyszkiewicz, a token “multinational”
force of 9500, which is participating in the US occupation of Iraq. Some
180 persons are wounded, including some 40 “coalition” soldiers;
among them 5 Iraqis and one Bulgarian soldier die the next day.2003
Adil Hadidi, shot as he walked out of his house in Mosul, Iraq.
He was an Iraqi lawyer working on a project funded by the US occupiers.

2002 More than 70 persons by two suicide bomber vehicles
at the Chechen puppet government headquarters in Grozny [photo >],
at 14:30. After breaking through three defensive lines of guardposts, a
Kamaz delivery truck rams right into the main building entrance [< photo]
where it explodes, while a UAZ (military type SUV) gets as far as an adjacent
parking lot, where it explodes. Some 70 persons are injured. The head puppet,
Akhmad Kadyrov is in Moscow, reporting to his masters. His deputy, Mikhail
Babich is not at headquarters either.

2002 (Friday) Noam
After, from Shilo, Gavriel Hoter, from Alonei
Habashan, Tvi Zeiman, from Reut and Yehuda Bamberger,
from Karnei Shomron; , andtwo Islamic Jihad militants,
Ahmed al-Fakiyah and Mohammed Shahin,
who at 19:45 enters the kitchen where the four students were working, adjacent
to the dining hall of the yeshiva of the enclave settlement Otniel, just
south of Hebron, West Bank, and shoot them, then shoot through a locked
door at the students having Sabbath dinner, wounding 5. Israeli soldiers
arrive within 2 minutes, kill one of the attackers during a 30 minute gunfight,
pursue the other and kill him some 2 hours later, after he wound three of
them. Islamic Jihad announces that the attack was in revenge for the Israelis
killing nine Palestinians the previous day, including Jihad activist Hamza
abu Roub.

Photo: People walk through the storm devastated forest near Saales
in the Vosges mountains, eastern France Monday 27 Dec 1999. Freak weekend
gales left at least 79 people dead across Europe, many hit by falling trees
and debris. France suffered the most with 44 victims.La
tempête du siècle (?)Another
powerful storm hits France as Western Europe struggles to
recover from freak weekend gales that ripped trees from the ground, toppled
walls and killed people. France bears the brunt of the devastation, and
Paris officials call for the battered city to be declared a natural
disaster area. Across France,
1.5 million homes remain without electricity. This is an ecological
disaster for Paris. Really, we'll need three years to reconstruct,
says Françoise de Panafieu, Paris' deputy mayor. Although weather
conditions in Paris and much of the country were calm on Monday, another
storm hit southwest France late in the evening with 130 km/h winds. All
flights to Bordeaux, Toulouse and Biarritz were canceled and train traffic
was suspended throughout the region. In
Paris, tens of thousands of people returning to work today Monday after
the Christmas holiday had to trample through streets strewn with debris,
broken glass and uprooted trees. Traffic lights were bent, newspaper kiosks
blown over and cultural monuments damaged. The storm toppled or damaged
60'000 trees in two forests on the city's outskirts and 2000 more along
the city's streets. Slabs of roofing of the Notre Dame cathedral were blown
off and a stained glass window at the Sainte-Chapelle was shattered by flying
stonework. Worst hit among France's
cultural monuments was the royal palace and park at Versailles, where the
roof was damaged, windows were broken and 10'000 trees were ripped from
the ground, including 200-year-old cedars planted around the time of the
French Revolution. The National Fund for Historic Sites and Monuments estimated
that it will take $62 million to $77 million to repair damaged cultural
monuments. Paris Mayor Jean Tiberi
said urgent repair work would be completed quickly, and predicted that millennium
parties in the city, expected to draw millions of revelers, would not be
disrupted. The information we have right now shows everything will
be normal," he said. But of course we'll be attentive.  He said
security checks had been carried out on a line of Ferris wheels temporarily
erected along the Champs-Elysees and that there had been no storm damage.
Gusts of about 170 km/h tore roofs off buildings and knocked over huge cranes.
It was Paris' worst storm in 50 years, officials said. The
storms, which began before dawn Sunday 991226, wreaked havoc across Europe,
disrupting travel by road, rail and air and stranding tens of thousands
of holiday travelers. In Germany, 17 people died, most of them in Baden-Württemberg
state across the Rhine from France. Fallen trees blocked roads and 1000
homes in Bavaria were without power. In
neighboring Switzerland, at least 13 people were killed and several were
injured, mostly by falling trees. Two of the victims were killed at a southern
ski resort when a tree crashed into a lift cable and sent their gondola
crashing to the ground. Thousands of homes, mostly in the mountainous Bernese
Öberland region, remained without electricity Monday due to fallen
trees. In northern Spain, a gust of
wind knocked down a wall under construction at a truck stop, killing two
workers. Three other people will killed in other accidents at two other
construction sites. In Italy, several highways were closed and 7000 passengers
were stranded at Milan's Malpensa airport. In
Belgium, several rivers overflowed their banks. In Paris, light airplanes
were flung around like cardboard on Sunday 991226. Chimney stacks were sent
tumbling and even the awning of the famed Lido topless cabaret was torn
from its support and propelled down the Champs-Elysées by the winds.

1997 Billy Wright, protestante y lealista paramilitar,
objetivo pirncipal del IRA, es encontrado muerto en la cárcel norirlandesa
de Maze, víctima de cinco disparos.  In Northern Ireland, Billy
Wright was assassinated. He was imprisoned as a Protestant paramilitary
leader. 1996 Mary
Celine Fasenmyer, Pennsylvanian Sister of Mercy, mathematician
born on 04 October 1906.1995 Boris
Vladimirovich Gnedenko, mathematician.1995 James
Meade, científico británico.1987 Rewi
Alley, 90, NZ author, pro Chinese Communist, in Beijing 1985 Twenty persons killed by terrorists, 110 wounded,
in attack on El Al at Rome and Vienna airports. US President Reagan blames
Libyan leader Momar Qadhafi 1985 Dian Fossey, is
found hacked to death at a research station in Rwanda. She was a US naturalist
famous for studying gorillas in the wild1979 President Hafizullah
Amin of Afghanistan, Soviet puppet in office for 3 months (since
the 14 September 1979 coup in which he murdered his predecessor puppet Noor
Mohammad Taraki), is ousted and murdered in a coup backed by the Soviet
Union, and replaced by Babrak Karmal, considered to be a more subservient
puppet. Amin is the 3rd Afghan President in 20 months to be overthrown and
murdered in a coup (the first one was killed in April 1978 in the Saur
Revolution that brought the Marxists to power. He was Sardar Mohammad
Daoud Khan, a non-Communist who had taken power in 1973 by overthrowing
his cousin King Mohammad Zahir, abolishing the monarchy, and proclaiming
himself the president of the Republic of Afghanistan in July 1973). The
USSR moves massive troops into Afghanistan, intervening in what was until
then a civil war between the Soviet puppet government and anti-Communist
guerillas. The USSR will be stuck in Afghanistan for more than 10 years
and ultimately defeated.

^1939 Day 28 of Winter War: USSR aggression against
Finland. [Talvisodan 28. päivä]
More deaths due to Stalin's desire to grab Finnish territory.

Eastern Isthmus: the Finnish counteroffensive at Taipale pushes
the Russians back from Kelja around midday.

The Russians lose 2000 men in the fighting at Lake Suvanto while
516 Finnish soldiers are killed.

Northern Finland: at Hulkonniemi in Suomussalmi, troops of the
Finnish 9th Division launch their decisive assault to destroy the
enemy's 163rd Division. The Russians are forced to withdraw from
Suomussalmi.

Colonel Siilasvuo receives word that the entire Russian 44th Division
is concentrated along the Raate road.

Ladoga Karelia: combat detachments of IV Army Corps commanded
by Major-General Hägglund launch a broad counteroffensive which
lays the basis for January's 'motti' battles. In Lieksa, the Finnish
troops attacking in the region of Kivivaara reach the Russian border
and take up defensive positions.

Finland's civil defense chief urges the public to make greater
use of camouflage and other forms of protection: cars should be
painted white and people should also carry with them white camouflage
clothing.

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin expresses his appreciation to Otto
Wille Kuusinen and his puppet 'Finnish People's Government' for
their 60th birthday greetings, and wishes them victory in their
struggle.

In a radio lecture, Professor V.A. Koskenniemi likens Finland's
fight to the struggle of the ancient Greeks against the great powers
of the ancient world.

1945 The International Monetary Fund.
1945 The World Bank for Reconstruction and Development,
created by an ageement signed by 28 nations.1936
Lee Salk doctor (CBS TV) 1930 Wilfrid Sheed England, writer (Boys of Winter, The
Hack)1929 Lucio Muñoz, Madrid Spanish pseudo-painter
and printmaker, who died on 24 May 1998. — more
with link to an image.1926 Rodrigo Carazo Odio, político y economista
costarricense.1922 Juan José Gerardi Conedera, in Guatemala City.
He would be ordained a priest on 21 December 1946. He was appointed on 05
May 1967 and ordained on 30 July 1967, and installed on 11 August 1967 a
bishop for the diocese of Cobán, Verapaz. He was appointed on 22
August 1974 bishop of Santa Cruz del Quiché, from which he resigned
and was appointed auxiliary bishop of Guatemala on 14 August 1984. He became
head of the Guatemala Catholic human rights office. As such, on 24 April
1984, he presented a report blaming the military for most of the 200'000
deaths in Guatemala's 1960-1996 civil war. On 26 April 1984 he was killed
in the garage of his residence, bludgeoned with a concrete block. For this
crime, on 08 July 2001 a Guatemalan tribunal would sentence to 30 years
in prison captain Byron Miguel Lima Oliva, his father colonel Byron Disrael
Lima Estrada, and the former presidential bodyguard José Obdulio
Villanueva, and to 20 years in prison, as an accomplice, Father Mario Orantes
Nájera, who shared the residence of bishop Gerardi 1915 Cooper,
mathematician.

^1904
Peter Pan, play by James Barrie Peter
Pan, by James Barrie, opens at the Duke of York's Theater
in London. Barrie was born in 1860 and studied at the University of
Edinburgh. He worked as a reporter for The Nottingham Journal
for two years after college. He moved to London in 1885 and became
a freelance writer. His first collection of sketches, Auld Licht
Idylls, was published in 1888 and became a success, followed
by an account of his days working in newspapers, called When a
Man's Single. He published a collection of stories in 1889 and
a bestselling novel, The Little Minister, in 1891. The Little Minister was dramatized
in 1897, and Barrie shifted his focus from prose to drama, enjoying
a series of successes. In 1904, he wrote Peter
Pan. Although he wrote many other plays, few are still
performed today, and none had the staying power of Peter Pan.
He became president of the Society of Authors in 1928 and chancellor
of the University of Edinburgh in 1930. Barrie died in London in 1937.
BARRIE ONLINE:

Thoughts for the day: The plural of spouse is spice.  —
{and it's nice if they live in different hice and wear different blice}“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but
not simpler.” — Albert Einstein [14 March 1879 –
18 Apr 1955] — {Dhey ot tu aplay dhat to Inglish speling, emong odher thingz}